Posts filed in: practice led research

“Speed and efficiency are not in themselves signs of intelligence or capability or correctness. They do not carry with them any moral value. They don’t necessarily make any social contribution. The most horrifying, violent moments of the twentieth century have centered around regimes wedded to efficiency and to speed” (John Ralston Saul, 2013: 260). “Born Ready” @Mark O’Connell 2017 Michael Snow’s flock of Canada Geese perpetually take flight, their frustrated bid for freedom encased in a great glass ceilinged atriumRead more

Desanctifying the Monastary of Modernism: a Multidimensional Exploration into the Conjoined Processes of Construction and Destruction that the Application of the Philosophy of the “Modern” Generates. A Performative Meditation on the creation of “Modernity” November 21, Ryerson School of Fashion Mark O’Connell “We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.” BaudelaireRead more

“Reposition the Canon, an Arts Based Exploration in Post-Structuralist Theory and Art Historical Biases” Mark O’Connell@2015 no reproduction without permission The visual narrative of this piece is based on the concept of knitting an unbroken narrative with a beginning, a logical progression towards an ending. Which in my opinion has been part of the process of constructing a cohesive modern art history. I have knitted a swatch to represent this historical progressive process, and then built a sculpture aroundRead more

Ductile Truths: The Malleability of the Reproductive Image. Creative Reflections on “The Precession of Simulacra” by Jean Baudrillard, Mark O’Connell@2015 No reproduction without permission “. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whoseRead more